The city of Livorno declared November 30 a day of mourning for the death of one of the city’s most well-known artists, Mario Monicelli. The legendary film director, 95, committed suicide on November 28, leaping out of a fifth-story hospital window in Rome. Monicelli, born in Viareggio in 1915, was hospitalized in his adopted city, Rome, where he was being treated for a terminal illness.
Monicelli’s extreme gesture shook Italy. Producer and friend Aurelio De Laurentiis commented, ‘I knew him very well and knew his great dignity and his desire to always be independent and autonomous, so I can understand why he did it. He recently lost his sight but he remained sharp as a tack, and he could not tolerate the idea of having to depend on someone.’
Actress Stefania Sandrelli, who is also a native of Viareggio, said ‘Knowing Mario, his was an extreme act of freedom, anticonformism . . . In his iron-willed certainty there was always doubt, in his smile there was always compassion.’ Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, a long-time friend of Monicelli’s, said that ‘his extreme gesture and will should be respected.’ A self-declared atheist, Monicelli did not want a funeral; instead, a vigil was held in Rome’s Casa del Cinema so members of the public could pay their last respects to one Italy’s greatest artists.
Monicelli worked in cinema, theatre and television. Regarded as the father of the Commedia all’Italiana, he directed 65 films throughout his career. Leftist in his views and values, he was known for his sharp tongue and wit and biting criticism of modern society.
He made his first feature film, Pioggia d’Estate, in 1937. His most popular films include the 1958 masterpiece I Soliti Ignoti and Amici Miei, considered the best Italian comedies of all time.
Over his 70-year career, he worked with such cinema greats as Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti and stars like Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale.
In a 2007 interview with Vanity Fair, Monicelli admitted, ‘Death doesn’t frighten me; it bothers me. It bothers me for example that someone can be there tomorrow and that I am no longer there. What bothers me is no longer being alive, not being dead.’
Amici Miei, the wildly popular Italian comedy-drama directed by Mario Monicelli in 1975, was filmed in Florence. The Italian box-office hit was followed by two sequels: Amici Miei: Atto II (1982, also by Monicelli) and Amici Miei: Atto III (1985), directed by Nanni Loy. The films tell the story of four friends (‘the gyspys’) in Florence who together perpetrate pranks, or zingarate.